Narrowing the gap: a report on the QuickSmart mathematics intervention

This article focuses on the cognitive factors that impact on students in the middle school years experiencing learning difficulties in basic mathematics. It begins with a review of selected literature providing information about the learning difficulties in mathematics. Focus then shifts to an implementation of the QuickSmart intervention. QuickSmart is a basic academic skills intervention designed for persistently low-achieving middle-years' students. In this small-scale study, 12 middle school students experiencing learning difficulties participated in the QuickSmart mathematics program. Comparisons are made between the mathematics progress of the intervention group and eight average-achieving peers. The results indicate that on measures of response speed and accuracy QuickSmart participant students were able to narrow the gap between their performance and that of their average-achieving peers. Further, on standardized tests of more general mathematical knowledge, participant students improved significantly from pre-test to post-test. Implications are drawn regarding the importance of interventions that emphasize automaticity in basic mathematics for middle years students with learning difficulties.